Designing visuo-haptic illusions for Virtual Reality applications using floor-based shape-changing displays

Large-scale haptic displays offer the opportunity to create fully-immersive experiences in Virtual Reality (VR). In particular, floor-based pin-array shape displays allow the creation of worlds with complex textures and walkable terrain patterns. However, the size and resolution of these terrains are typically limited by the physical constraints of the actuating hardware, negatively impacting the designing of VR experiences. To overcome these limitations, we propose the usage of visuo-haptic illusions for floor-based shape displays, effectively creating the illusion for terrains of a larger size and of a higher resolution. Following closely related prior work, we have conducted two user studies with 32 participants to determine the threshold of the visuo-haptic illusions and their impact on the perception of shape display resolution. Our findings offer potential solutions to the physical limitations of floor-based shape displays and provide insight into enhancing the overall VR experience to give more freedom to designers to create haptic feedback using pin-array shape displays.